Out-Of-Home's Pandemic Paradox: U.S. Time Spent Rose As Ad Spending Crashed


In the ultimate paradox for an advertising medium, the time spent with out-of-home media among Americans actually expanded during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, but spending by American advertisers fell, according to findings of PQ Media’s annual Digital Out-of-Home Media Forecast.

While total time spent among Americans expanded 0.5% to 2.86 …

2 comments about "Out-Of-Home's Pandemic Paradox: U.S. Time Spent Rose As Ad Spending Crashed".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, September 9, 2021 at 9:06 a.m.

    I assume that the "time spent with OOH media" estimates refer to the amount of time that people were out-of doors per day. It's rather surprising to see even a slight uptick in these estimates for 2020 as it is widely reported that many people spent more time at home during the first year of the pandemic. As for the ad spending aspect, there were reductions in many media venues as advertisers cut back in expectation of lower demand for certain products and services. Out-of-home was hit hard because many marketers probably believed that people would spend less, not more, time away from home.

  2. John Grono from GAP Research, September 9, 2021 at 6:30 p.m.

    I'm unsure how the data is collected and analysed in the US, but the use of mobile-phone location tracking is commonly used.

    A pitfall that some fall into is aggregating the time-spent and reporting that quantum without taking into account that mobile-phone penetration has probably increased and that allowing device location is typically increasing.

Next story loading loading..

Discover Our Publications